This has little to do with marketing and not much to do with football, and is prompted by something I saw last night and something else I read this morning.
Anyhow, what with my partner being Italian and me being English we have had the dubious pleasure of first watching England who despite having most of the possession drew against the U. S. and then Italy, who had about 75% of the ball and played beautifully – but drew against Paraguay.
In both cases this was because the teams that should have won failed to finish – which reminds me of those vapid letters that end with the anodyne phrase “We look forward to hearing from you” – to which the response is “Don’t hold your breath, pal.”
Moving quickly on, we were watching Italy-Paraguay game in Signor Zilli on quaint old Dean Street, Soho, when across the road I saw three black men kick and beat a white man with no interference from anyone. It looked as though it was a dispute about stimulating substances, and eventually after the culprits had sauntered off at their leisure, the police arrived too late to do anything. Probably too busy filling in forms about racial quotas.
I was reminded of two things.
First, Mad Angie, my partner in the late 60’s, a retired “party girl” who had been a methedrine addict told me that making drugs illegal (you could get them on prescription at that time) would lead to enormous growth in addiction and crime. She was right.
And second, I recalled something from a book I am reading about the years between the two world wars called The Morbid Age. In those days Adolph Hitler was not the only one keen on large scale euthanasia; many distinguished British and American thinkers thought the subnormal should not be allowed to breed or killed off at birth.
One phrase I read summed up what people saw as the consequences of letting the wrong people fuck: “We are getting larger and larger dregs at the bottom of our national vat”. You can see lots of those dregs any night in Soho, though rarely demonstrating their character quite as vigorously as the group I saw.
Another bit I liked in the book was a classification of the congenitally subnormal as idiots (unable to look after themselves); imbeciles (unable to manage their affairs unaided); feeble-minded (requiring care and supervision); and moral defectives (deficient, but also vicious).
What baffles me is how so many of them end up in politics.
You forgot Lawyers & Public Relations people. The ones that don't make the cut to be politicians!
Seriously.
No one sheds a tear for the dregs of society; I don't generally make it a policy to put myself in harm's way during a mugging. It happened to me in a club when I was 18, felt sick to my stomach. He bled all over. Nothing I could have done. (Yeah right)
I do worry that it has become easier if not the norm to stand by and do nothing. Shock or apathy – waiting for somebody else to call the cops. They have a name for that. The Bystander Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
The Cops always arrive too late, but at least they still arrive. The problem with the fantasy of exterminating the bottom half of humanity, is it tends to make a new bottom, you and me.
Searchengineman
PS: HIPPO's have no apostrophe! 🙂 which is why I don't show my wife what I write. She's an English teacher and rips me apart for all manner of typographical carnage. It seems that copywriters have a mysterious ability to actually speak with proper punctuation, which is why you English sound funny to us Canadians.
It is amazing how many lawyers get into politics; and our new PM is an ex PR guy. I agree about the rest of what you say, Stan. How co0me so many Canadians do well as copywriters, though?
And it's all there in the movie: Idiocracy, by director Mike Judge. The movie takes your premise, Drayton, and shows its natural progression way into the future. Very funny!
Canadians have some of the funniest comedians & writers. I am a firm believer that comedy & tragedy are one, which makes for excellent writing material.
It comes down to this, 3/4 of the year Canadians are freezing our asses off. When we are not swinging hockey sticks at one another. The only other activity; aside from drinking after the game, is pondering & reflecting on the state of affairs (hopeless). Or trying to figure out our neighbors to the south of us (pointless). This makes us very sad or worse very polite.
This can be very funny or downright depressing. Much ink has been spilled and often written down. As a reward for having an opinion Canadians will often throw out these trouble makers to foreign lands (Unless our Human Rights commission gets them first, Ezra Levant), where they become fantastically famous. Now that these writers have been accepted by the enemy. It's ok to accept them back into the happy fold (Cold?) of Canada and claim we were with you all along!
If you spent more time hating those with an opinion, instead of listening to them, your writers might get even better at what they do. To be hated and listened to is very Canadian.
Canadians do our best listening with beer.
We are very good listeners.
Searchengineman